How to Design Pathways Inside Your Product

Do not index

Path Design is how you get users from where they currently are all the way to the results that they care about.

A process is only as good as the outcome it produces, so how do you design one that reliably results in outcomes users care about?

Sections

We're Building Processes, Not Products (0:34)

Deeply Studying the Outcome Situation (Point B) (9:39)

Identifying Where Users Currently Are (Point A) (12:15)

Thinking in Situations Rather Than Demographics (14:06)

Identifying the Necessary Changes Between Point A and Point B (26:03)

Determining the Order of the Necessary Changes (33:59)

Takeaways

Focusing on parts of the path instead of the path as a whole

It's a bad strategy to focus on parts of the process and leave others "to users to figure out." Focusing exclusively on the parts of the process within product scope sets users up for frustration; they're leaning on you to be the expert and help them use the product to solve problems outside of it. (3:34)

The outcome is the key to path design

The key to path design is clarity on the end outcome (what the path results in). Every time the user engages with the product, it is within the context of the end outcome; so every interaction should be framed against it. (10:11)

Hypotheses for better paths

Where the users are ultimately trying to get to (by using your product) and what their circumstances are when they discover your product are out of your control. They should not be assumptions in your design process, but testable hypotheses. (12:26)

Thinking situationally vs. thinking in output

To start thinking in terms of situations, go from "is" (The user is...) to "has" (The user has...) to "when" (XY action is necessary when...) (17:35)

The critical pathway

There are infinite paths between "where users are" and "where they want to be." Thinking of the critical pathway (the actions or stages the path must contain by necessity) is a compression algorithm — it compresses that near-infinite, unordered information into a single hierarchy. (27:32)

Paths are composed of sequences of steps

Deeply understanding the actual order and sequence of what needs to change so users can make progress helps you harness their inherent motivation to achieve the outcome. You're looking to give them the materials to support their own autonomy and self-actualization, rather than trying to impose that on them. (59:23)